cavalryman

“The heat was suffocating,” a French cavalryman remembered.

Curators from the museum had told the F.B.I. that the cavalryman was worth $4.5 million, and an expert witness called by the prosecution said that its thumb was worth about $150,000, Artnet News reported.

It took museum officials a couple of weeks to notice that the thumb was missing from a warrior known as the cavalryman.

Even if the cavalryman is restored, he added, “nothing can change the fact that the finger was once damaged.”

Still, some of the most egregious defenders of slavery represent states that seceded in the Civil War, including Alabama, whose statue in front of the majority whip’s office depicts Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate cavalryman who in 1864 oversaw the massacre of Black Americans at Ebenezer Creek, in his Confederate uniform.